Month: March 2016

KUNDAN PANDEY | MARCH 4 2016 | DOWN T EARTH

Photo: Soumik Mukherjee / Picture from DOWN TO EARTH

Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat when he claimed that malnutrition in his state was high because girls had become “beauty-conscious”. In May 2014, he became the Prime Minister of India. Five months into his stint, the National Democratic Alliance government received a survey conducted by UNICEF named the “Rapid Survey on Children”. The survey was commissioned by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development. All this information was revealed…CONTINUE READING

SUNITA NARAIN

| MARCH 15 2016 | DOWN TO EARTH

We know that the poor are worst affected by environmental degradation. They live in poverty; have the highest exposure to pollution; drink contaminated water, which is responsible for the highest mortality among children; breathe polluted air; and depend on depleting forest resources for their survival. Research over the years has made it clear that the poor, through their intensive use of natural resources, are not responsible for environmental degradation. It is the extensive use of resources on a commercial scale, involving highly energy-intensive and extractive industrial methods, by the rich that is primarily responsible for degradation.

In the 1970s and ’80s it was widely said that the “other energy crisis” is firewood for cooking as supply was short and women had to spend hours walking to collect this basic need. It was also said that this use of energy by the…CONTINUE READING

P.CHIDAMBARAM | MARCH 6 2016 | THE HINDU

Farmers had taken note of the BJP’s failure to keep its election promise of offering a Minimum Support Price (MSP) of cost + 50 per cent. I had pointed out that the increases in MSP in 2015-16 were paltry. Members of Parliament were aghast when Prime Minister Modi declared his contempt for MGNREGA that, according to him, was “a monument to the failure of the Congress governments”. Critics warned the…CONTINUE READING